New gender and land profiles shed light on women’s rights in Central Asia

The Gender and Land Rights database (GLRD) launches five new country profiles from Central Asia: Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan, available in English and Russian.

The data from the country profiles confirm that small farmers continue to face significant difficulties in acquiring land from state farms, and women in particular, have been widely overlooked by post-Soviet land reforms and redistribution programmmes. This, combined with women’s limited access to paid employment, has negatively affected household food security and also weakened their decision-making power within their families and communities.

“Policy makers and land-related institutions must work further to educate the local population on women’s rights to land and to support the legal and institutional mechanisms that prevent gender inequalities in ownership and control over resources. The failure of not doing so constitutes a real threat to food security and rural development, because women make up a considerable proportion of agricultural workers”, says Ana Paula de la O Campos, Gender Policy Officer for FAO’s Gender, Equity and Rural Employment Division.

Important improvements, however, have been accomplished - - particularly in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, where land laws have been brought into line with Article 16 of the Convention on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW)...